Teaching and Educational note The importance of sample selection: An instructional resource using U.S. presidential elections Denise Dickins a,⇑ , Yaser Fallatah b,1 , Julia Higgs c,2 a Department of Accounting, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, United States b Department of Accounting & Management Information Systems, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31262, Saudi Arabia c Department of Accounting, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, United States article info Article history: Available online 8 February 2013 Keywords: Audit sampling Sample selection U.S. Presidential elections Electoral College Instructional resource abstract The purpose of this instructional resource is to use a non-auditing situation, predicting the election of the President of the United States, to help students understand the importance of sample selection in drawing inferences about a population. Of particular focus are the importance of understanding the characteristics of the population, using the appropriate sampling unit, the risks of drawing incorrect inferences about a population, and the power and limitations of sampling. These sampling-selection concepts are also applied to a routine auditing task: the confirmation of accounts receivable. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Understanding and applying sampling concepts is critical to the successful execution of many auditing tasks, including selecting internal controls to test for operating effectiveness, selecting prop- erty, plant and equipment acquisitions to vouch, and selecting customer account receivable balances to confirm. Auditing standards recognize that both the effectiveness of an auditing test (i.e., the extent to which the test is sufficient to detect material misstatements), and the efficiency of the test (i.e., the 0748-5751/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2013.01.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 561 234 9432. E-mail addresses: dickinsd@ecu.edu (D. Dickins), Fallatah@kfupm.edu.sa (Y. Fallatah), jhiggs@fau.edu (J. Higgs). 1 Tel.: +966 3 860 4217. 2 Tel.: +1 561 297 3663. J. of Acc. Ed. 31 (2013) 68–83 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect J. of Acc. Ed. journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaccedu